


take me so breathless, we could be reckless

by holsmi



Series: an open road, driven together [2]
Category: The End Of The Fucking World (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Eloping, F/M, Marriage, Rated for swearing, i know nothing about british culture, inappropriate and ineffective use of british slang, season 2 non-compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-08
Updated: 2019-11-08
Packaged: 2021-01-25 07:36:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21352585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/holsmi/pseuds/holsmi
Summary: “Do you want to get married?” Alyssa asked. She heard James put his book down."Ok," he said.
Relationships: Alyssa/James (The End of the Fucking World)
Series: an open road, driven together [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1539334
Comments: 12
Kudos: 177





	take me so breathless, we could be reckless

**Author's Note:**

> Same setting as the first fic in this series, with James and Alyssa together for the two year gap between seasons.

“Do you want to get married?” Alyssa asked. She heard James put his book down.

They were lying at the side of a lake—not the lake by her aunt’s house, nor any other lake in particular. Just a lake they nearly passed by. She asked to stop, because she could tell that James’s leg was starting to bother him, and knew he wouldn’t say anything for miles.

James had laid down to read and Alyssa pillowed her head on his shoulder, staring at the clouds. She drifted away to the sound of turning pages and the gentle feeling of James playing with her hair. 

“Ok,” he said quietly. 

Alyssa looked up at him, and saw him already looking down at her, and a bright, rare smile shined on his face.

He kissed her on the top of her head and shambled to his feet, leg stiff from being too still for too long. He walked with even paces back to the car.

Irritation flared up in her. “Hey!” she yelled. “Where the fuck do you think you’re going?!”

—

James felt giddy. “I’ll be back in a moment!” he called back. He popped the boot open and started to sift through it.

He briefly flicked his gaze towards Alyssa to see her walking towards him, arms akimbo, yelling, “We were having a beautiful fucking moment and you decide now to reorganize the fucking boot!”

I love her so much, James thought. She continued, “what was so fucking important that you had to fucking ditch me? What was so fucking dire, James?”

James felt the pouch and closed his fingers around it. He pulled it from a duffel like a prize and held it out to her. “This,” he said, closing the boot.

“Fuck’s that?”

He gestured for her to take it. “Open it.”

“I don’t want to fucking open it. I want you to fucking tell me what it is.” She crossed her arms in front of her.

James sighed, loosened the top of the pouch and dumped a ring out into his palm. It was a simple band with a single delicate diamond embedded in it, and he held it up pinched between two fingers. “It’s for you,” he said.

“What?”

He raised an arm up to wrap around her, and waited for her to move towards him, to give him silent permission. She went, and James tucked her against his side. Her arms were still crossed, and she stared at the ring.

“My dad gave it to me months ago. Told me I was too smart to not marry you.” His dad was a hopeless romantic and gave him the ring, this heirloom. “It was my mum’s,” he said.

—

It was one thing, she thought, to spontaneously ask someone to marry you, and another thing entirely to learn he’s been carrying around a fucking diamond ring for months.

James’s shoulder was comforting as she pressed her cheek against it, and she liked the feeling of his arm around her.

She felt petulant, but said anyways, “So, what, you were just carrying that around, waiting to decide whether or not you loved me? That’s fucked, that is.” The filter between her brain and her mouth still felt like an open channel sometimes.

He shrugged. James knew her too well to be impacted by that. “I just wanted it to be special. Romantic, even.” He paused. “I wasn’t sure if you even wanted to get married, or if we were too young.”

Alyssa uncrossed her arms and took the ring from his grasp. It was much lighter than expected, than the weight of their future together. “Kind of maverick, yeah? Getting married young.”

“Yeah,” he said.

“Well,” she said, holding the ring back out to him. “Are you going to put it on me or not?”

James took the ring, and slid it down her proffered finger. 

—

James never felt like his relationship with Alyssa’s mum was good, or even just okay. She always seemed like she couldn’t reconcile that he did learn to walk again, that he did not go to jail, and that he was still a part of Alyssa’s life, long after their exchange at the hospital.

Her reaction after seeing the ring on Alyssa’s finger, her and James standing arm in arm in front of her at her Aunt Leigh’s lake house, made her look like she was malfunctioning. She cycled between elation that her daughter was getting married and discomfort when she remembered who Alyssa was marrying. 

She quickly whisked Alyssa off, gesturing wildly and talking about color schemes. Alyssa sent a look at him over her shoulder, something akin to a cornered animal.

He waved and smiled at her, mouth closed, and walked away to call his dad.

—

James’s dad died before the wedding, and that was an old kind of pain, familiar but unique.

—

James held the steering wheel loosely, enjoying the feeling of wind in his hair and the sound of Alyssa singing along to the radio. He had been singing, too, but had gone quiet.

“Do you want to get married?” he asked over the music.

The music was loud, and Alyssa turned it off.

“Uh, yeah?” she said. “That’s what we’re doing in a month. Did you forget? Did you bump your head?” She playfully ran her fingers through his hair, like she was checking for injuries. 

“No. No to both. But, I meant right now.”

“What, here? On the side of the road? Should the car marry us?” They were driving to nowhere in particular. School was on break, the cafe didn’t demand Alyssa be there with any regularity, and they both needed a break from her mum and the wedding. His dad was safely secured in the backseat; James hadn’t figured out what he should do with the ashes, yet.

“Well, no, but we can’t be far from a town. A town means a courthouse. A courthouse means…” he trailed off.

“Means what? Fucking eloping? My mum would have our heads if we got married now. I’m not allowed to even get a haircut until then.”

“Nothing stopping us from doing both.” He paused, and when she didn’t have a response for that, he repeated, “want to get married?”

Alyssa looked stunned, but happy, and she said, “yeah. Yeah, alright.”

James grabbed her hand and he kissed her knuckles. He liked it when they held hands, when she held his burned hand; a rebuttal of when, in the beginning, she thought it was gross.

“Fucking romantic, that is,” she said, turning the radio back on with her free hand, louder than it was before.

—

The town they stopped in first did have a courthouse that could marry them, but also required a twenty-four waiting period. They stayed in a shitty motel and laughed the next morning when they worked very hard not to look at each other, for the sake of pointless tradition. They bumped into each other as they dressed simply: James in a nicer than average pair of jeans and a decent shirt to match and Alyssa in her least-wrinkled sundress.

Alyssa carried a bed sheet between them on the way out of the motel, blocking their view of each other. When the lady at the front desk tried to question it, incredulous, Alyssa shouted, “fuck off! Can’t you see we’re getting fucking married?” That didn’t provide her any answers.

Alyssa dropped the sheet outside the courthouse when they were still by the car. James reached for her and asked, “Will you kiss me?” with such fondness that Alyssa couldn’t not push him against the side of the car and bring their lips together.

They went in and came out married. It was brash, and hotheaded, and perfect.

—

Halfway through the reception a month later, Alyssa threaded her fingers through James’s, and pulled him through the backdoor of the venue. She led him to his dad’s shitty car, and they slipped away from the party quietly. 

They drove towards nothing together, in love, and did not see any hitch hikers along the way.

**Author's Note:**

> Like, Bonnie's out there. She just hasn't tracked them down, yet.
> 
> Additionally, please imagine them as that meme of the wife getting wine drunk and burning the marriage certificate saying, "good luck returning me now without the receipt" They are both people in that marriage.


End file.
